A Comparison of Hyperstructures: Zzstructures, mSpaces, and Polyarchies By: McGuffin & Schraefel Presented by: Travis Gadberry

Abstract Background Smaller chunks of info (not full pages) Focus on the structures, not implementation Desire for new ways of accessing data

Structures Multitrees Polyarchies Zzstructures mSpaces

Multitrees Kind of DAG Can contain multiple overlapping trees Overlaps must share subtrees Ex. Human genealogies

Multitrees

Polyarchies Can contain multiple overlapping trees Overlaps may contain subtrees Overlaps may happen at arbitrary nodes Coloring edges distinguishes different trees

Polyarchies

Zzstructures Kind of directed multigraph Subject to a single restriction R: Each node in a zzstructure may have at most one incoming edge of each color, and at most one outgoing edge of each color Edges of each color form paths/cycles that do not intersect within the same color

Zzstructures

mSpaces Difficult to visualize Ability to organize data points in multivariate space Allows for dimensional sorting, changing structure of the tree.

mSpaces mSpace polyarchy for a 3D 2x2x2 multivariate space. 3! (6) overlapping bi. trees Each row displays 1 slice less (3D, 2D, 1D, 0D)

mSpaces

Taxonomy

Analysis Zzstructures ?= edge-colored directed multigraphs ? (ecdm) Zzstructures == ecdm + R R can be simulated by node cloning Advantages?

Comparisons Zzstructure’s Space non-Euclidean Not easy to flatten and visualize May be changed independently of content More freedom Can be much more confusing Dimensions are like containers Nodes have a relative position in some dimensions

Comparisons mSpace’s Space Euclidean Like a high-dimensional grid Slices can be taken and visualized Space determined by attributes on content More structured Changing location of nodes doesn’t affect space Dimensions are variables Nodes have a value in every dimension

Comparisons Nature of overlap between trees Polyarchy – arbitrary Zzstructure – arbitrary Multitree – one subtree is shared mSpace – all subtrees at certain depth are shared

Conclusions & Future Work New ways to create hypermedia systems This paper has shown the differences Visualization applications are needed Other hybrid or extended structures